Zu Ende

Ed and I began dating in May of 2007. Last night, we broke up.

It's been an interesting and mostly great three years, but I won't get into all of that now. Why did we break up? Well, I keep thinking that it's a long and complicated story, but I think that really it is a short and simple one.

My relationship with Ed has always required high inputs of energy. It has been a high-drama, high-maintenance relationship, which has mostly suited me well.

But grad school takes up all of my energy. It's not that I don't have time left over for talking or hanging out or whatever, but I don't have mental energy and space left for being an extremely involved partner. I was thinking about this last night, and what I think is, I could only be a really involved partner to someone new (where you have that crazy "new relationship energy") and, if that happened, I would probably fail my classes, because I really can't do those two things at the same time. Maybe if it were someone more studious than I am and also in grad school, then it would work out, but otherwise, I don't see how it could. (I am certainly not looking.)

Ed tried to deal with my benign neglect as best he could, but it made him increasingly hurt and angry. This came up a week or so ago in a big way and we made some changes to try to resolve it, but I think the changes were too little, too late, and last night he decided to call it quits.

It wasn't a big surprise. I had felt (and said, a few days ago) that I thought our breaking up might be inevitable. There was a lot that I valued in the relationship - so much that I couldn't decide to break up with him myself - but there was no more that I could do to fix things, I didn't think. I decided to proceed as though the relationship would continue in the best possible way and let the chips fall where they might. And this is where they fell.

We are still friends. I consider it nobody's fault that the romantic part of the relationship is over. (I started to say that it was nobody's fault that it "didn't work out," but it did work out, very much so, and the fact that it was of limited duration doesn't change that.) I don't think either of us is moving out of our shared apartment anytime soon, so we will have to get through this awkward stage of being newly broken up. I think we will.

Thanks for three and a half great years, Ed.